Alphaen
“...for for forty days and nights there were violent typhoons and floods; and afterwards in a single day and night of misfortune all their warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the Empire of Alph, with all its cities and wonders, disappeared in the depths of the sea." The Legend East of Mount Silver, past the Dark Mountains icy slopes, past the depths of the Lake of Rage, south of the verdant forests and towns of the descendants, one finds the Endless Ocean. It is not, strictly speaking, endless. It is only two thousand miles across, but when the first men reached this shore, refugees from the fall of Alph, they had understood such an expanse of water. It stretched across the horizon, still warm even in the depth of winter, and in its rolling waves they felt the ocean’s inexorable strength, its vastness. They fled from its creeping tides, from the stinging salt spray and the soft sucking sand beneath their feet. They found other places to build their cities. Today, humans no longer fear the ocean. They tread its beaches and fly kites in the constant shore breeze, and frolick with their pokemon in the surf. Children play in the sand, building castles and watching the waves devour them. They gather seashells and driftwood and imagine they are treasures. They were treasures, once. The ocean’s waters are turbid and opaque. A trainer who stands in the waves cannot even see as far as his feet; the foam and silt conceal them. The water hides all it touches. Sometimes, trainers will keep swimming, long after the bottom has dropped out beneath their legs. A few hundred yards offshore, the tips of the waves obscure all but the tallest trees back on land. Trainers who swim this far can no longer hear the shouts of children on the beach. They hear only the churning waves and the cry of gulls overhead. Some swim further out, a mile now, and only a faint smudge on the horizon remains of the rest of the world, visible when the bobbing waves reach their crest. Humans are not exactly renowned as swimmers. Their feet and hands make for poor paddles, and although their lungs are deep and their endurance can be herculean, they cannot swim forever. The whirlpools will eventually claim them. Eventually they will sink, and leave behind the air and the land, the sun and the stars, the wind and the light, and they will plunge into the depths. The water around them darkens rapidly. If they look up, they see the surface world fade and disappear, and the sun is a single solitary star flickering between the waves, here and gone, here and gone, and lost. They are blind in the land of night. The water presses all around them, crushing them with darkness, and they can no longer tell down from up or sense the depths into which they are falling. Nothing remains but the black ocean. And if they live long enough, as they near the ocean floor, they may see a faint glow tracing the crevices and canyons beneath them. They may see points of light dancing just beyond the reach of their fingers. The Ruins are the only known remnants of the Alphaens, but it is hundred of miles away inland, guarded by mountains on one side and thick forests on the other, within the center of Johto. Truthfully, it was little more than a small colony outpost, but it alone survived the Sunder. Out here, offshore to the south, there are no cities anymore. The largest empire to ever exist, sprawling across thousands of leagues above the waves, is gone. Only fragments remain, scattered here and there along the ocean bottom or cast like driftwood upon the beaches far away. People who come here now, who sink to these depths, have found the heart of that lost empire. The lights they see, shimmering all beneath them, are the edges of the Starlight Trench. Legends tell of the Diluvian Queen, the second-to-last ruler of the Empire and the millions of Alphaens who lived within its terraced mazes. Hers was a long line, stretching back thousands of years, before humans had tamed the first pokemon. Her rule was gentle, the pace of life slow. The Alphaens were content, and it is said they lived in harmony the Sky and Sea themselves, who lived amongst them -- perhaps an old wives tale... Perhaps... The queen and her court lived in an enormous palace crafted from mother of pearl, thinner than an eggshell, clear as glass, pregnant with all the colors of the ocean. The castle stretched for miles above the Starlight Trench. Entire cities grew within it and beneath it, floating amidst forests of kelp, foundations of bedrock and the rocky salt pillars that suspended its high ceilings. Where once this palace filled the world above the Starlight Trench, only a vast and empty canyon remains. Far below, embedded in the silt, one might find thin shards of nacre, curved like the shell of an egg, so brittle they break at the barest touch. They are all that remain of the palace, and soon even they will be gone, ground into sand or consumed by the snails and worms that crawl through the muck. Legends tell of the Diluvian Queen’s four children -- three daughters and a son. In her final years, the queen set a challenge for her daughters: whoever could secure the greatest boon for their people in the course of a year would receive the crown. The other children must bow to her and acknowledge her as their sovereign. The eldest daughter, a beautiful maiden whose hair shone like pearls, set out to live amongst the Guardian of the Water. She swam with him for a full year, crossing the ocean from pole to pole, and from him she learned to sing. Her voice filled the waters of the Starlight Trench when she returned, and the Alphaen Court wept to hear her. In the land of night, no artwork had such a reach as song, and this she taught to her people. The second daughter, a maiden whose eyes sparkled with the sun, sailed to the shore. She called up to the Guardian of the Air, and for a year she flew with him, traveling from country to country, speaking with them, learning of their world and sharing hers. She brought back to the Water Court tales of far-off cities made of rock and metal and wood, or vast deserts and endless jungles and fields. She was the first true ambassador of the Alphaens to the waking world, who did not come bringing sword and chain, and she laid the first stone in the bridge between the Past and the Future. The third daughter, a warrior maiden whose prided, sought out the wild creatures of the Empire. She found the fastest, the mightiest, most powerful of the creatures of their empire and put herself against them. For a full year she trained, both with and against the creatures of their kingdom until few could stand against her and her companions, and when she returned she brought back the spirit of friendly competition. She gathered all the peoples of the Alphaens and founded the first great games to test their skill, leadership and strength and to crown a champion. And so the daughters appeared before their mother the queen and bowed to her, ready for their coronation. Each was confident that their gift would win them the crown. And then the son arrived. He was a quiet man, smaller than his sisters, narrow in body and stature, with a wasted arm and poor constitution, yet a mind sharper than a razor's edge. For the past year he had stayed within the hidden places of the Palace, and studied the writings of his people, the secrets that fueled their empire and worked their wonders. The writings saw in him a will to power; he saw in them a means to an end. And during the year while his sisters built new friendships and treasures for their people, he plotted. He made pacts, and when his family had at last assembled to select a new queen, he arrived with an arm made of crystal, and an army of sigils, free of stone and papyrus at last. The Alphaens had never known a Emperor, and the son decided he would not be the first. Instead he styled himself Master, not merely of the Alphaens but of all the Waters and Skies. He blinded his sisters, slew his mother, and took her crown for himself. Scattered throughout the Starlight Trench are broken statues. There are thousands of them, half-buried in the mud, and there must be thousands more sunk or shattered into pieces too small to discern. In some parts, where the undersea currents are strong enough to sweep away the silt and mud, the statues cobble the floor of the trench, a long road through the darkness, beginning in nothing, ending nowhere. The statues are all the same: a prince, his lips twisted in a sneer of cold command, his crystal eyes judging the empty wasteland all around. Some statues are more or less untouched, as though they escaped whatever force had broken their kin. Along their bases are inscribed faded lines in an ancient writing, so old and debased that no man today, not even the remaining People of the Water, can decipher it. Whatever wisdom they once contained is lost. Not a single inscription is fully intact. Even on the few unbroken statues, those otherwise unblemished, a single word has been obliterated. It is chiseled out, or smashed, or scored, and not in one statue out of the thousands littering the Starlight Trench can this word be read. It has been erased from history. Aside from the worms and snails and crabs, the statues are the only inhabitants of the Starlight Trench. All the rest is water, and darkness, and dancing points of light, drifting just out of reach. The Truth There is something or many a thing at work in the world that gives rewards for destroying what dearly belongs to another. There is magic in the screams of a burning sacrifice, the drugged pain of a castrated boy, the wasting of a lover, and the horrific agony of a vivisected woman. This is otherworldly power that can be gained from inflicting suffering that is above and beyond the power derived from merely material exploitation. It’s only a short leap from figuring this out about the world to deciding that this is all there is to the world; that instead of gods there are just hungry monsters and instead of questions of good and evil there is only the question of feasting with the monsters or being feasted on by them. Long ago the lost empire of Alph made its choice. Suffering and wonder were at the core of that long gone city. At its heart the Empire was nothing more than a gigantic carnal house and torture chamber through which millions of slaves passed so that a few thousand warrior-sorcerers could work their will on the world. How did the Alphaens build their wonders: the city of Sinjoh, the The Raised Road, Az’s Pillar, the Temple of the Sea, and the far greater structures consumed in the Deluge? How did they forge the Unknown or cause their cities to float? Death and pain were harvested and exchanged for everything the histories say “they made”. Whatever limits there were weren’t human ones. The binding of pokemon in their balls, the manufacture of artificial pokemon like Porygon, the thousands of battles and duels daily that occur across the land, the ancient remnants filled with powers and those who hunt them, the League itself with the distinguished Four on high, all these are nothing more than quaint remnants created by provincials aping or catering to the tastes of the mighty capital. All the world-ending powers in the shadows of this colorful world are either an inheritance from Alph or the legacy of similar societies that were just smaller in scale. If you ever thought the Roman Emperors were a bit over the top, simply add the horns, tails and wings and you’ll have a collective portrait of the class that ruled the world for thousands of years. The Alphaens did any of the criminal "Teams" one better by sending the populations of whole countries into the arenas for blood sports against Pokemon and Human alike. The official reason was to entertainment for the growing empire, but there’s good reason to suspect these battles were strictly secondary and the real reason was to slowly bleed the slaves to death as a colossal and continuous sacrifice. Each death on the sand fueled the creations of the Alphaens just a little bit more. How many lives did it take to make something like the Crown of The Sea? How many gallons of ichor spilled to bind Kyogre and Groudon to those orbs? The war between Alph and the Legendary Pokemon and the Guardians clearly resulted in the loss of this great Empire. But it did not result in victory. The land remains sundered, and while the ruins of old Alph outposts are crumbling, the destructive creations they left behind are as new and as strong and as sharp as the day they were formed. Travelers can visit the every corner of what remains of the world, but no one returns from still sleeping Alph. Physical Description The Alphaen race would have passed for human, were it not for their expansive silver wings, finned tails, and tapered, thin horns. Standing between 5’ 5” and 6’ 5” tall, the Alphaens posses pale skin and silver, grey, and white hair. Their other features, however, come in a multitude of brilliant colors, with their horns and wing tints usually matching their eye colors and vice versa. Their wings were unusually broad and almost digitrade in appearance, and with heavy wingbeats allow an Alphaen to take to the sky. Conversely, they could pull their wings in tight to their body, their powerful tail allowing them to snake through the depths of the ocean. Alphaens typically take only one mate during their lifetime, a process that is rarely done out of love and usually by arrangement. Relations Now scattered and thrown into the voidlands, the few surviving Alphaens are still as irredeemably racist, viewing themselves as a superior race, if not physically, than culturally at least. Those who are more overt in this long held view are, of course, quickly ‘corrected’ by the locals, but no Alphaen forgets their Empire or their former status as their world’s masters. They simply adopt a more internal, and quieter, sense of superiority to their non-Alphaen peers. Alphaens are occasionally valued in their communities, especially coastal ones, for their trinatural existence: they walk upon the land, take to the air, and plumb the depths of the sea which brings them a variety of trades in this world as fishers, pearl divers, scouts, envoys and sailors. Although no strangers to physical feats of dexterity and skill, especially those of flying and diving, Alphaens are content to let others do grunt work and graciously allow their comrades into ‘carrying their burdens’. With the idea as the harbingers of civilization in mind, Alphaens pride themselves on their wisdom, reason, logic, and philosophy. They will gather and horde knowledge and learning like a dragon hordes coins, but will thoroughly enjoy a good conversation or problem presented before them. Alignment and Religion Alphaens are complicated. One on hand, they are lovers of the arts, music, learning, and civilized society. The Empire put forth many laws that gave equality and took care of its citizens through many social reforms. On the other hand, they enslaved anything that wasn’t Alphaen. The slaves,depending on their masters, were either condemned to backbreaking and bloody slave labour, or treated more ambivalently as household servants. They worshipped the primordial concepts of Sea and Sky as deities and would regularly sacrifice slaves upon the altars of both, with a multitude of feast days, festivals, celebrations, and games throughout their calendar years. It was too these concepts that they prayed to for victory in wars, healthy children, good harvests, and clean rains. Most Alphaens therefor are Lawful, with leanings towards either Neutral or Evil. Names Male: Cerialis, Paullus, Gaius, Lucas, Kaeso, Catulus, Aulus, Pedius, Serranus Female: Aethisia, Chanilla, Palacia, Dexane, Asteodia, Argentum, Leucippe, Platalea, Pleione, Chaicilo Standard Racial Traits * Ability Score Modifiers: Alphaen society prized ingenuity and wisdom, but were strangers to manual labor. All Alphaens start with +2 to Widsom and Intelligence, but -2 to Strength. (1 RP) * Size: Alphaens are Medium creatures and thus receive no bonuses or penalties due to their size. * Base Speed: Alphaens have a base speed of 30 feet. * Languages: Alphaen begin play speaking Alphaen. Alphaens with high Intelligence scores can choose from Common, Aquan, Auran, and Draconic. * Mariners: The Alphaens have a love of the sea and will always have Swim and Profession: Sailor as a class skill. (1 RP) * Flight: Alphaens have a fly speed of 50 feet with average maneuverability.(8 RP) * Swim: Alphaens swim speed of 30 feet and gain the +8 racial bonus on Swim checks that a swim speed normally grants. (2 RP) * Amphibious: Members of this race are amphibious and can breathe both air and water (2 RP) Alternate Racial Options Children of the Sea: Some Alphaens were more accustomed to their realms under the waves, and were more especially adapted to the lightless depths of the oceans. An alphaen with this racial trait has darkvision 120 feet when underwater, but otherwise has no darkvision at all. They can likewise can sense vibrations in water, granting them blindsense 30 feet against creatures in contact with the same body of water. Finally, an Alphaen with this racial trait gains fast healing 2 for 1 round anytime she submerges completely within a body of natural salt water, fresh water, or brackish water. Stagnant, poisoned, or trapped water (such as an artificial pit or a bag of holding) does not activate this ability. The Alphaen can heal up to 2 hit points per level per day with this ability, after which it ceases to function. This racial trait replaces the Alphaen Flight Racial Trait Children of the Sky: Some Alphaens were more accustomed to their lofty towers and the reaches above the world, and found that the sky answered back. Breezes seem to follow these Alphaens wherever they went, but some Alphaens were better able to control these winds than others. An Alphaen with this racial trait surrounds herself with swirling winds, gaining a +2 racial bonus to AC against non-magical ranged attacks. The Alphaen can calm or renew these winds as a swift action. Once per day, the Sylph can channel this wind into a single gust, making a bull rush or trip combat maneuver attempt against one creature within 30 feet. Whether or not the attempt succeeds, the winds are exhausted and no longer provide a bonus to the Alphaen’s AC for 24 hours. This is a supernatural ability. This replaces their Swim Movement Trait. Mixed Blood: A few Alphaens went so far as to mix their blood by mating with those of lesser races. In some cases, the offspring would be a pureblooded Alphaen, with all of the physical characteristics; in others, the mixed blood would lose the wings, tail, and horns of their sires. They were considered a mid-point in Alphaen society: free and able to participate in Alphaen society, and protected by their laws, but derided upon by their betters. Such Alphaens appear to be human, save their white hair, fair complexion, and unusual eye color. These Alphaens are so in tune with the air and sky that they can sense the slightest change in atmospheric conditions. Alphaens with this trait can spend a full-round action to predict the weather in an area for the next 24 hours. The Alphaen’s prediction is always accurate, but cannot account for spells or supernatural effects that might alter the forecast. They likewise gain a bonus feat at level one, and may take both a skillpoint and a healthpoint as their favored class bonus. This replaces their Flight and Swim Movement Traits. Category:Race